4.20pm: Right, that's it for today. Before I go, a quick round-up of what we've learned today.

• Five in 6 pupils in English schools failed to achieved the grades needed to bag a Bac.• There are huge discrepancies across the country between the amount spent by schools on its pupils. Featherstone High School in Ealing spends £10,034.11 for each of its 1,466 students, whereas All Saints Catholic Centre for Learning in Knowsley, Liverpool spends just £1,529.81 per head.• Many people are unhappy with the "arbitrary" selection of which subjects qualify as a core Bac subject.• A lot of people really don't like Michael Gove.

Thank you for all the insightful comments. Cheerio.

4.10pm: Great point from @celyn50 in the comments section, asking where all the extra language teachers are going to magically appear from to teach the Bac.

I would just like to ask where, a few years down the line, are the language teachers needed for the EBacc going to come from?

Since the requirement to study was dropped, less pupils doing A level language, University language departments closing and now, all government funding for humanities withdrawn?

3.23pm: How does it feel to be a teacher whose subject is now filed under "unessential" (ie no longer deemed a core subject)? In the comments section below, information and communication technologies teacher ukuleledan gave an insight:

As an ICT teacher I'm gutted that my course is no longer deemed a core subject. Of course the humanities and languages are aceness importance, but whatever these students end up doing, they will need the basic ICT skills that a Level 2 (GCSE type) ICT qualification will give them.

Young people are naturally excellent at social ICT e.g. social networking and gaming, but will not pick up the necessary working ICT skills unless taught in school.

Do businesses really want to pay to train their new employees how to use spreadsheets, databases and word processors in the future? Its not the nineties!

3.17pm: A feisty caller got stuck into Michael Gove on Radio 5 Live earlier today, lambasting the education secretary for the Bac's shortcomings. He told Victoria Derbyshire that he'd had to pull over the side of the car and was "seething but also laughing" at what Gove had been saying.

I have a daughter in secondary education and I'm seething because I don't understand where you've got your arbitrary list of subjects from, the things that matter, etc. Maths and English, sure, but the other ones? The humanities, etc? What about music and the arts and so forth?

My guess is that this just reflects your own personal, narrow experience of education and good luck to you, Mr Gove... I'd just ignore your silly English Baccalaureate because it doesn't reflect our children's experience of life.

2.45pm: The Girls' Day School Trust (GDST), a big group of private schools, wants to put in its penn'orth. Kevin Stannard, director of innovation and learning, says he has concerns about how the English Baccalaureate is being introduced. One particular bugbear is that the subjects which qualify for the Bac are somewhat arbitrary - why, for example, is ancient history on the list of acceptable humanities subjects, but classical civilisation or religious studies are not?

Here's his full statement:

We greatly welcome government recognition of the importance of a broad and balanced senior school education, measured through rigorous exams in academically challenging subjects and including humanities and languages as well as in other core curriculum areas. GDST schools encourage a breadth of learning, through intellectual engagement across contrasting subjects, to GCSE. Having achieved high standards in a broad and balanced portfolio of subjects, our students have earned the right to specialise in the Sixth Form and beyond.

However, we do have some concerns about how the English Baccalaureate is being introduced.

The term 'Baccalaureate' is presumably intended to convey the sense of breadth in a student's achievement, and this is laudable. It's perfectly logical, too, to insist on evidence of that breadth at 16, leaving two years for specialisation at school. But why use the term 'Baccalaureate'? Everywhere else in the world, the term denotes the school-leaving qualification, so the EBacc sits uneasily at a standard somewhere below that of other national baccalaureates. Surely this wasn't intended.

There is an element of haste involved, with the retrospective application of new criteria on a curriculum that is already in place. Clearly, decisions on which subjects to include will influence curriculum choices in future, but they have no effect on the cohort measured last year. Policy-makers need to be aware that changing exams and schools' performance measures can have undue, unintended and unfortunate implications for teaching and learning. By contrast, relatively high-performing national education systems, such as those of Singapore and Finland, tend to deliberate extensively and consult widely before introducing fundamental changes in teaching, learning, and attainment.

More specifically, it is not clear why ancient history is on the list of acceptable humanities subjects, but classical civilisation or religious studies are not. There are similar concerns about the inclusion of only those IGCSEs that happen to have completed the accreditation process (so, for instance Cambridge IGCSE French is included, but not German; and no Edexcel IGCSEs at all).

As a result of hasty implementation, the figures produced will not convey what they are intended to convey, at least in the first two years. Low proportions of students achieving the EBacc might easily reflect not the breadth or standard of achievement, but the failure to meet arbitrary and evanescent criteria. After two years, the data will begin to more nearly approach the DfE's intentions, but this will be as a result of schools amending their curriculum policy.

More broadly, we are also uneasy about increasing the influence of tests at 16, when the statutory school leaving age will soon increase to 18. GCSE exams dominate education in the middle school years – increasingly so with the introduction of controlled assessment, about which the GDST has already expressed concerns.

2.27pm: Gah. Forgive a moment of solipsism, but I just looked at my old school's entry and it's not very encouraging reading. Morecambe High in Lancashire was and is a very big, very mixed comprehensive which did and does its best in a pretty deprived area. I have great memories of the place. But it gets a bit of a kicking in the table: of 243 GCSE students, a not-disastrous 53% received five A*-C, while only 3% would have made the Bac, were it on offer.

I post this not to boast that I went to a comprehensive, but to share what a lot of people are probably feeling today about seeing their school's performance reduced to a tiny single figure percentage. Rather sad.

2.12pm: The National Association of Head Teachers has waded into the debate, issuing a press release to moan that the government has "changed the rules mid-game" by releasing a league table for the previous academic year – "even though the English Baccalaureate is not yet in place and schools have had no opportunity to prepare."

After issuing obligatory congratulations and backslaps to hard working teachers, diligent pupils, etc, Russell Hobby, the NAHT's general secretary, derides the table as "misleading and unhelpful", deflecting attention away from the improvements in performance.

He says:

For example, 300 schools failed to achieve the 30% floor target in 2009 whilst the comparative figure in 2010 in 82. Taking the new floor target into account, 216 schools failed to achieve the 35% standard. This is further evidence significant improvement yet those schools involved are not having their achievements recognised in the frenzied reaction to an indicator that was imposed late in the day.

You follow that?

1.59pm: I've just received a visit from Simon Rogers, the Guardian's data guru, who pointed me in the direction of the Data Blog, which is doing typically fine work today. Read the full analysis here, but in the meantime, this is what Simon has discovered combing through the league tables so far:

• The average spend per pupil across England at secondary school is £5,547.13. The median secondary spending, which is more typical, is £5,212.35• Ryeish Green secondary school in Wokingham spends the most per pupil in the country: £32,937.91. But it only has 83 pupils• The first big secondary school in the table is Featherstone High School in Ealing - it spends £10,034.11 for each of its 1,466 pupils• The lowest spending school is All Saints Catholic Centre for Learning in Knowsley, Liverpool - £1,529.81•Secondary schools in England, on average, spend 56% of their budget on teachers• Heworth Grange Comprehensive School puts 73% of its total spending into teacher costs - the highest in the country

The primary school that spends the least per pupil has been rated "outstanding" by school inspectors. Chatsworth primary in Hounslow, west London, spends £992.73 per pupil. The average for a primary is £4,284 according to the new data made available by the Department for Education today. Inspectors, who visited the school in January 2009, said: "Pupils achieve extremely well at this outstanding school."

12.48pm: I am signing off from the liveblog now. My colleague Helen Pidd will be taking up the baton shortly. Please do keep your comments coming in.

But what should give Michael Gove a bigger headache, is the impact the new league tables will have on the poorest pupils. Since becoming Education Secretary, Gove has made narrowing the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils his cause celebre. Yet today's reforms to the league tables are likely to encourage schools to focus their resources on more affluent pupils. ippr analysis shows that in 2009, only 26.6 per cent of pupils eligible for free school meals achieved 5 or more A*-C grade GCSEs or equivalent including English and Maths, compared to 54.2 per cent of pupils not eligible for free school meals - an attainment gap of 27.6 percentage points. And only 10,000 children on free school meals got grades A*-C in a modern language - just one in fifty of that year's cohort of pupils. The harsh reality is that the pupils most likely to achieve the Bac are those from more affluent backgrounds.

12.24pm: Many of the most famous schools in the world including Eton, Marlborough and Harrow and Dulwich College have branded the new ranking system "half-baked" after they registered lower results than some of England's worst-performing comprehensives today, reports the Telegraph.

According to the tables, at 142 independent schools no pupils achieved five A* to C grades including English and maths, while a further 26 scored below 10 per cent.

The rock-bottom ratings come because most independent schools have dropped conventional GCSEs in some subjects and moved towards the tougher International GCSE – an alternative qualification based on the old O-level.

12.09pm: Lots more league table links in today's Cribsheet by Judy Freidberg - she asks, what's going to happen to those who teach non-bac subjects?

12.00pm: Again, apologies to readers for those errors in our tables. Happy to say they have been corrected. Many, many thanks to our beady-eyed readers - @Adele001 and @Kleistphile among them.

11.58am: Useful point made by Datablog reader Robert Carruthers, who remarks that there is a "negative Pearson Correlation Co-efficient between per pupil spending and percentage achieving five good GCSEs of -0.37". That may not sound hugely interesting, but do carry on reading...

What does this mean? Well, taken at face value it means that for every 10% extra spent per pupil, the percentage achieving five good GCSEs is lower by 3.7%.

In reality it means that huge amounts of extra money are being spent trying to drag up the worst areas and that it is having little effect compared with the socio-economic and cultural problems being faced in the poorer performing schools. What is happening outside the schools (material and cultural deprivation e.g. lack of value given to education) is far more important than the money being spent inside.

This will explain:

(1) Why Labour's extra spending has failed to raise results and has actually seen us fall back in the PISA rankings;(2) Why the pupil premium may not work as intended;(3) Why the quality of what goes on in schools may be just as important or perhaps more important than (financial) quantity.

The implication is that schools need to be seen as part of a wider learning culture (or lack of it). Without improvement outside schools, the schools themselves can't help their pupils. It doesn't imply that we need to spend less, merely that spending more may be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for improvement.

11.52am: Sorry readers, there appears to be an error in our column for the number receiving English bacs. We are fixing this as quickly as humanly possible and all tables ought to be correct soon.

Thanks to those who have pointed this out.

11.50am: Interesting point about league tables and examination board from @Petercs in our comments, who wonders about the market-driven nature of the examinations game:

Market driven examination companies and league tables tend to drive down standards in education, making exams easier to pass; we may be better served by government and universities setting standards.

Both former head of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority Mick Waters and educational publisher Philip Walters have openly stated, what many pretend not to know: examination boards (they are companies) compete by suggesting their exams are easier to pass and will therefore give their customers (schools) a better chance of climbing the league tables.

We need a range of qualifications that suit the full range of capabilities of students whether academic, vocational or trade orientated.

11.39am: Some comments from the Association of School and College Leaders on the English Bac, which they argue does not provide a reliable measure of overall achievement.

ASCL General Secretary Brian Lightman said:

"Michael Gove's praise yesterday of the quality of education and school leadership in Britain makes it all the more frustrating that he is determined to create further opportunities for parents and the media to make invidious comparisons between schools."

"The job of school leaders is to ensure that young people in their care have the best possible chances to succeed and this is not helped by having to react to the moving goalposts of arbitrarily invented and retrospectively imposed targets."

"The English Bac shows how many students have taken a specific combination of subjects. It says nothing about the range of courses on offer, the suitability of the curriculum for the students in that school or overall achievement. I don't know of any employers or universities that say they need more applicants who have studied geography or history instead of other rigorous academic GCSEs."

"Today's announcement is unfair to young people as well. There are sure to be students who achieved 12 A grades at GCSE but because they did not choose to study history or geography as a humanities subject will not earn the bac."

11.13am: Some really interesting comments coming in. This from @teaandchocolate, on how they made their choice of school. What criteria do you look for?

[I] recently chose a school for my child. It was not a secondary school, but I barely glanced at the league tables. The same criteria will help me judge the secondary school. I know my child, and I know what would help him settle comfortably into school. I looked for:

* sports provision* outdoor space* safety* class sizes* positive ethos* teachers who were interested in motivating and encouraging my child* a caring school* a school that was not mainly motivated by results. * overall provision- I want my child to experience the full range of opportunities that schools should provide; music, art, PE, ICT, technology and after school clubs.

League tables are not an indicator that your child will be happy, and in my experience if a child is not happy they won't learn even in high ranking schools.

Of course we all want good standards, but just looking at results is a flawed way of judging a schools performance.

@warwickmansell Anyone else picked this up? By my calcs, some of England's top public schools have scored zero on new Eng Bacc measure.

10.53am:Jessica Shepherd has sent this from The Royal Society, which believe the introduction of the English bac is a "logical step":

Libby Steele, Head of Education at the Royal Society, said: "The introduction of an 'English Baccalaureate' target is a logical step to ensure that young people receive a rounded education and are in a position to make better qualified decisions about their progression through the education system.

With science identified as playing such a pivotal role in the UK's future economic prosperity and the competition for university places and jobs escalating, the Royal Society hopes that pupils will recognise the value of choosing to study sciences to GCSE level and beyond."

10.24am: Jessica Shepherd, the Guardian's education correspondent, asks whether schools have enough modern language teachers to ensure a high proportion of their pupils can take languages and go on to receive the English Bac.

On the Times Educational Supplement's forum, one teacher says that the "pressure on the number of humanities and languages teachers students will not be able to do more than one [subject]". "We used to have students who would do two languages or two humanities, not any more."

Another says that schools won't be able to employ more modern language teachers "until, say a media teacher leaves as there is no money for new staff".

10.12am: The Institute of Directors have chipped in, commenting that the English bac results are alarming for employers.

Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors, said:

"Clearly, no single performance measure is flawless; it is impossible to distil into one statistic a representation of the quality or otherwise of an education system. But the fact that fewer than one pupil in six achieved the threshold for the new English Baccalaureate is very worrying and underlines the continuing need for radical reform in education.

"The Coalition Government has made a strong start in its education reform agenda. Its November White Paper contained a welcome emphasis on teaching standards, the extension of autonomy, and improving attainment in the basics. Its proposals for an English Baccalaureate rightly build on the foundations of the qualifications we already have, rather than seeking to reinvent the wheel. What today's figures illustrate is the scale of the challenge. If our education system is genuinely to match the quality of the best in the world, more of the same manifestly isn't good enough."

10.06am: Education reporter Jess Shepherd, has pointed out that "teachers from all types of schools have complained that the English bac does not include enough subjects".

She writes: "The HMC, an association of 250 private schools, says the English Bac is "arbitrary and narrowly prescriptive".

According to the HMC:

Many of England's most academically successful schools will have no candidates achieving the new English Baccalaureate in the 2010 Government performance tables, published this week, because of the arbitrary and narrowly prescriptive way it has been defined.

A survey of more than half the 250 schools in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC) found that three-quarters (75.6%) of candidates have gained the requisite GCSE grades in English, maths, two science subjects, a foreign or classical language and a humanities subject.

But because of the arbitrary exclusion of one examination board's IGCSE (International GCSE) maths qualification,1 and the requirement that candidates taking separate sciences must enter all three and pass two, many schools will be shown as having no students qualifying for the new EBacc.

Christopher Ray, High Master of Manchester Grammar School and chairman of HMC's academic policy committee, said:

"At MGS, we believe that every boy at MGS receives the rounded education which is the Government's aspiration. But none will gain the EBAcc, because they all entered, and passed, typically with A* or A grades, the Edexcel IGCSE maths exam. This absurd situation will be replicated in most HMC schools.

[...]

"The EBacc is a half-baked initiative. The narrow specifications the Government has drawn simply fail to recognise the obvious success of most students in our schools."

Chris Keates, General Secretary of the NASUWT, the largest teachers' union, said:

"Publishing league tables is a meaningless exercise and it is time to abolish this unnecessary, divisive and demoralising ritual.

The performance of schools cannot be evaluated by the crude blunt instrument of league tables.

Dedicated teachers and hardworking pupils once again are seeing their efforts trashed.

The Coalition Government is pursuing a relentlessly elitist approach to education, condemning schools to live or die by the narrow range of subjects identified in the English Baccalaureate.

This narrow focus on a core range of academic subjects fails to acknowledge the different learning requirements of pupils.

The rigid and inflexible judgements published today are of no value to parents or teachers and signal a bleak future for young people".

9.59am: Interesting comment from Bluejil:

Took a quick look and every school in our area is crap so feeling much better about our local, at least they are all equally crap. Seems we would have to travel very far indeed to find one at the top of the tables.

Will this motivate underperforming schools to raise their game or simply put more pressure on better-performing, already over-subscribed, schools? Or will it just make a lot of parents feel a bit blue?

9.55am: So, how did your school do? For comprehensive data on schools throughout the country, check out our datablog, with figures from expert data-cruncher Simon Rogers.

9.52am: Just one in six pupils in England has achieved the new English Baccalaureate introduced by the government, the BBC reports.

The results for the new English Baccalaureate show just 16% of 16-year-olds achieved good grades in the mix of subjects the government thinks they need.

Mr Gove says many countries measure how well their students achieve across a core of subjects.

The measure is of how many children achieve good passes in English, maths, a language, geography or history and two science qualifications.

In more than half of state secondaries (1,600), fewer than 10% of pupils achieved this.

And 270 of England's state secondaries scored zero on this measure.

9.47am: The Telegraph reports that the new league tables have revealed that more than 3,000 secondary schools in England are shunnung tough subjects "vital to further study and employment".

Under the measure, all pupils are expected to score A* to C grades in the five core subjects of English, mathematics, science, languages and humanities.

But official figures reveal that fewer than 50 per cent of pupils hit the tough new target in 3,151 secondaries. It means the majority of pupils are falling short in more than three-quarters of the 4,046 state and independent schools in England.

9.43am:The new league tables reveal that more than 200 schools in England failed to meet the new target for GCSE results, reports Jeevan Vasagar.

The coalition last year raised the basic target for schools to a threshold of 35% of pupils achieving five GCSEs at grade A*-C, including English and maths.

A total of 216 schools out of nearly 3,000 state schools in England failed to meet this threshold in last summer's exam results, according to this year's secondary school league tables.

9.24am: When the radically different exam league tables are published today, parents, students and teachers will be able to compare schoolsas never before. Interested users will be able to search secondary school ranking, and then drill down into those results to see how they performed in different subject.

The league tables will also be the first to include a new measure, the English baccalaureate, which is likely to be the most controversial element of today's release of data. The new measure reveals how many pupils in English schools achieve grades A*-C in five core subjects - maths, English, two science qualifications, a foreign language and either history or geography.

For the first time parents will be able to see just exactly how their child's school spends its money, from administration costs to frontline teaching staff - and compare this data to other rival schools.

They will also be able to see how many children in any particular school receive free school meals, traditionally seen as a indicator of poverty levels.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, is urging parents to fully use all the information available. Speaking to education leaders in London yesterday, he said: "I expect that we will see new performance tables drawn up by schools themselves, by active citizens and by professional organisations which will draw attention to particular areas of strength in our school system."

As the league tables are unveiled our education team will be at hand to provide analysis and report on the day as it unfolds. But we want to hear your thoughts. Have you found the new league tables useful? What anomalies have you found? Write your comments below.